About FoodMayhem

In the chaotic kitchen of a recipe developer, you get a food blog called FoodMayhem.

I'm Jessica, an Asian-American, born and raised in NYC, and that's Lon, my Jewish, white husband. While professionally trained as a French culinary- and pastry chef, many of FoodMayhem recipes are my attempt to preserve and share authentic Chinese and Taiwanese recipes learned from my mom. We don't eat Chinese food every day, so you'll get a little bit of anything we find delicious enough to share: from our Eastern European side; recipes and techniques learned from my restaurant days; restaurant reviews, food travel tips; and a few other juicy bits along the way. Welcome to FoodMayhem!

Recipes that include Chinese pepper powder

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Some Chinese dishes are so well known that there’s already an accepted English name for them. It certainly minimizes confusion when all the restaurants use the same name on their menu. We have no doubt what Hot & Sour Soup is. We recognize the word wontons and Ma Po Tofu signals heat to us. For every widely known Chinese dish, there’s at least 5 that have not met with such fame and fortune. I don’t read much Chinese so even I get confused when reading the English translations on menus.

It always causes me to think about naming when I write these recipe posts. Sometimes, like this time, I really didn’t know what to call this dish. In Chinese, it’s called Jee Jwen, which translates to Chicken Roll.